


Mint Tea and The Rapture

by MissBlueEyes



Category: The Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures
Genre: Christian Character, Christianity, Deconversion, Demonic Possession, Demons, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Fictional Religion & Theology, Fingerfucking, Holypunk, Imaginary Friends, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Sex, Loss of Virginity, Mythospunk, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sex, Sex Magic, Sexual Fantasy, Succubi & Incubi, The Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures - Freeform, The Rapture (Christianity), Vaginal Fingering, mythpunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:54:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22448245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBlueEyes/pseuds/MissBlueEyes
Summary: Leah was grown up. She'd put away childish things and turned her eyes to the hard work of being a mature Christian woman, which might have been harder if the devil didn't keep sending demons of the wrong sex into her dreams to try to tempt her...and if she didn't have such a light-sleeping roommate.Then the Rapture came, and she found out that not everything you stuff into a closet will stay there forever.Distant sequel to Angel With a Shotgun.
Relationships: Human/Succubus
Kudos: 17





	Mint Tea and The Rapture

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains formatting that makes it hard to read without the work skin.

Leah was lying in bed, trying to convince herself she was strong enough to make herself go to sleep instead of lying awake and...stumbling...when the Rapture came. Her mind drifted, sliding on the edge of sleep, half-coherent, when the vision came to her.

This again.

She giggled to herself. Satan would often send her ideas and images meant to encourage her to cheat on her future husband, but...he couldn't do it right most of the time! This was one of those times, everyone in the picture was naked, but he was making the same mistake again: he'd forgotten to put any naked _boys_ in the picture! Maybe this was just God's way of making sure she wouldn't be tested beyond what she could bear--somehow, often as not, she ended up 'stumbling' anyway when this happened, but it was still funny to imagine the devil going to all this trouble to tempt her only to mess up something so obvious.

Anyway, one of her favorite sermons ever had been about laughing in Satan's face, so she figured a little hilarity would actually count as holy in these circumstances.

The picture was stranger than usual, this time, and there'd never been _sound_ before, but this time there was.

Actually, the whole thing was strange. The devil was a mocker, and he usually used events and people from her life--even if just ones she'd seen on billboards or the little TV she watched--but this time she was seeing stuff that _definitely_ hadn't been part of her day. There was a girl, tall, blonde with a huge mane of hair, and in her arms...whelp, that was definitely a demon anyway. A deceptively pretty one, with soft features, long silver hair and ram's horns, which--something. This was even funnier if she could remember why, but her sleepy mind wouldn't make the connection. A new thought about what might be going on: Satan was out of boy-demons and had assigned her girl-demons because that was all he had left. There was a background behind them her spiritual eyes couldn't process, and the sense of people all around, like she was watching from a crowd. The blonde girl was saying something--no, Leah knew that look of conviction, that raised and passionate tone of voice: the blonde girl was _Testifying!?_

What kind of testimony could someone so lost they were carrying a demon like they loved it have to give? Curiosity drew her deeper into the vision...

_Matthew 11:15 He who has ears, let him hear._ The girl was talking, and she could hear: 

"...so what I'm saying is, you deserve to have a choice. If he didn't create you the way my pet here is created, with no choice but to want and love me for better or worse, you deserve to _actually be able to decide_ whether you want to be with god for eternity. The choices you know about right now, are be with him forever, or eternal torment. What if to you, that's just two different Hells? How can he be good, and not _either_ make you like my pet, or give you a real option other than him?"

"Even the Bible says that your ancestor ate a fruit of knowledge of good and evil whose consequences are still with you enough now that god holds you responsible for them. If you're seeing me, it's because I, or my lovely pet here, are the person you need to see, to see the truth. Maybe that's because something in my message will speak to you. Maybe it's because you'll look at me and realize that like me there was never a chance for you to be happy in submission to the Christian god, or anyone else. Maybe there's someone like my beloved here waiting for you to open your eyes on them like I did. I don't know. There are millions of us, sending out this message, hoping that you'll get it and see what you need to see to make a real choice. Know good, and know evil, and judge for yourself, but _actually look_. Don't be like the dwarves at the end of the Last Battle. If you see something good, let it be good."

There was a strange sense of spiritual power like lightning crackling in her room, and Leah startled awake to the buzz of her phone vibrating on her nightstand. In her clearing head, another Biblical reference stood out in letters of fire:  


_Isaiah 11:6, but not the exact quote: "The lion will lie down with the lamb", a common misremembering because--_

She blinked. _That_ was weird. Isaiah was talking about the time of Jesus' heavenly reign on the New Earth, but she was absolutely sure that whatever she'd seen wasn't happening on _any_ Earth, and yet, the girl with the giant blonde lion's mane of hair and the demon with ram's horns looking as innocent as a lamb were obviously meant to be "lying down" together...right, phone. It was buzzing more, one message after another hammering in.

Leah rolled over and shook her head to clear the last of this away, then picked up her phone fumbled the screen on to find a long list of notifications. Her hand reflexively tapped one of them to open its app as her mind caught up to the fact that she was opening a message from her Bible-study leader Chana that consisted of the single word _help._

There were more messages following it, one after another, sentence fragments describing Chana's deteriorating state of mind:

it's Nate Chana disappeared she just walked into the closet and disappeared like the rapture came did the rapture come

yt?

please answer

Chana's gone and I'm being attacked I hear her voice calling me

Correction: the state of mind of Chana's husband Nate. He must have picked up her phone in a panic.

It says follow her but it knows a dream I had that came from the devil I'm really sure

Nate was a baby Christian. He swore he hadn’t converted for Chana’s sake but Leah wasn’t sure about that--whatever the reason, he didn’t have a lot of Christian friends yet, so it wasn’t surprising he was reaching out to Leah as a random name from Chana’s phone under “Bible study”.  


Can’t tell you about the dream it was inappropriate sorry I don’t have a brother to confess to rn

Leah's heart leapt as she read this, and then jumped right out of her chest as her roommate Jessy slammed the door to her room open, wild-eyed, and blurted a single heartstopping phrase:

"Hashtag rapture."

Leah's fingers scrambled for the Twitter app, went to search the tag but it was the top trending item even before the app loaded "her" trending things, clicked, and stared dumbfounded at the timeline of the apocalypse:

Liam is gone, just gone, he dove under the bed like always and just disappeared :tears: #rapture

Just walked through the doors of Sonrise's worship hall with 50 people for a prayer vigil for those left behind, only 3 left after we passed the doors. Please pray with fear and trembling. #leftbehind #rapture #tribulation

"Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour". The hour is NOW it's HAPPENING HOSANNA #rapture #falllikefire

Please pray for me I'm still here and I don't understand why! I'm saved! I worked out my salvation every day #rapture

4 of our prayer group didn't make it into the living room blessed are they #rapture #leftbehind

Her eyes widened with each tweet, until:

If you had the dream please reply #rapture #demoncarry #wishwithme

In a trance, she tapped on #wishwithme.

Me #wishwithme #demoncarry

What does it mean? A last deception from the devil? Can't find this in scripture. #demoncarry #wishwithme #rapture

Not sure how to apply proper NBE safety to this situation? Anyone ever hear of SPG this widespread? Making a wish to go somewhere good seems safe enough but not sure of potential gotchas here or how hijackable that would be. #demoncarry #wishwithme #nbe #occult #dreamwork

Is anyone else's godphone acting weird? None of my deities have a coherent response to this but it doesn't feel like I'm shut out either. #polytheism #wishwithme #godphone

Quick symbological breakdown of The Dream at the link. #wishwithme #demoncarry #dreamdoors #modernoccultistmag

Okay seriously does anyone have a link to anything _substantiated_ about this? All present & accounted for here and I blame The Dream on emergent mass hallucination brought on by social media synchronizing everyone's minds 1/2 #demoncarry #wishwithme #thedream #socialbrainwash #skepticwally

Read my blogpost, I was right and my conclusive evidence about what’s happening is right in front of you all now. Of course we all want out of this mess ASAP but wishful thinking isn't going to make it happen #demoncarry #wishwithme #thedream #socialbrainwash #skepticwally 2/2

I'm doing it, the door to the hall is right there everyone else is gone and I'm going to wish with her #wishwithme TTFE that's ta ta forever

“Prayer meeting in the living room.” 

Jessy's voice pulled her back from the void of strangeness.

“This is it. Mel disappeared right in front of me coming out of our room! I don’t know why we’re left behind but we are and we’re downstairs setting up to pray because maybe it’s just not happening all at once come ON do you want Him to see you with your lamp gone out?”

Jessy looked panicked, crazy-eyed like she always imagined John the Baptist must have--

“Mel is _GONE_!?” 

Leah shrieked and leapt from her bed, phone still clutched in her hand, and made for the door.

“Yeah. Tara’s in the living room already--” 

Jessy’s voice was ice, like it always was in a crisis, but even so:

“How are you so calm!? I--”

Tara's voice echoed down the hallway: 

“HURRY! HE’S COMING BACK I CAN FEEL IT!”

There could only be one 'He' Tara meant, and Leah rushed like she had never rushed before--Tara was by far the most spiritually sensitive of the five of them, and with Mel already Raptured Leah wasn't taking any further chances.

By the time they reached the still-dark living room, Tara and Emily were already seated, holding hands, urgently praying together in tongues under their breaths. Leah could feel the strange sense of static electricity that always seemed to her to go with really powerful spiritual activity, and that same sense of presence--she sagged with relief. At least the Lord would still visit their home.

And at least Leah wouldn't have to come up with a prayer--that was hard enough without extra-weird temptations and _apparently the Rapture_. Jessy and Leah took up positions in their usual chairs, leaving a conspicuous and strangely-terrifying hole where Mel usually sat on occasions like this. Leah suddenly hated her seat, though it had long been her favorite, because she was opposite the living room window and could see the full moon glowering red through the interposing clouds and tree-branches like something out of one of those "dangers of Halloween" videos.

_Revelation 6:12 Then I watched while the Lamb opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth. The full moon became red like blood._

Leah was glad it was nighttime. Sort of.

A terrible silence loomed, cut only by the soft sounds of Tara and Emily praying, as Jessy and Leah scooted their chairs across the carpet to make it possible for everyone to join hands without Mel. It seemed such an impossibly mundane thing to do while the Rapture was going on around them--HONK.

Leah recognized the horn of the train, unnaturally and freakishly loud because of the wind or something she supposed, but it was clear enough that her roommates heard the angel of the lord blowing its trumpet.

She never knew who broke the circle. It must have been Emily or Tara losing their concentration, but suddenly the room was a flurry of panicked activity and skidding furniture. They ran, tipped over the couch in their panic, and crashed out the front door and there was silence. Even the subtle cacophony of their terrified breathing went quiet. 

Leah listened, but she didn’t hear footsteps in the hallway.

She also never knew why she hadn't panicked. In the circumstances it was the sort of thing anyone would panic for. Leah wasn't even the level-headed one, that was Jessy's job. Leah more kept up the hiding-in-the-corner-being-scared side of things.

She wasn't in the corner now, she was in the center of the dark room, staring out the window blankly at the apocalypse-red moon. It was dark, but the hall light shone through the front door, strangely numinous in its cheap fluoresence.

Knowing words like _numinous_ and _sehnsucht_ was also usually her department. She'd miss confusing Tara whose gifts were more of the heart than the mind with them.

It came to her that they’d all been in their PJs, and that she still was.  


Mind blank, she got up, turned on the light, closed the door to the hallway, and sat back in the chair. The reflection of the room blocked out the red moon somewhat, but she found she didn't care.

Everything seemed unnaturally quiet. Shouldn't there be crashing cars and pilotless airplanes spiraling out of control and into the ground?

_This is reality, Leah,_ she thought to herself.

She sat, and wished Tara had managed to teach her to talk to God directly. For once the Bible wasn't cutting it and she needed a direct line.

Maybe she could figure it out. She prayed a prayer she figured couldn't lose: _please tell me what’s really happening,_ and for the first time she heard something like the sense of God's always talking to her Tara described, a voice inside her soul, speaking quietly, but with tender love and kindness--except, it was a _girl’s voice_.

A girl's voice she _knew._ At first, only the sense of the sound came through, tone and rhythm, the silhouette of enunciation like chatter in another room. Instinctively curious, she focused on it, and words poured into the silhouette together with a flash-vision of the speaker that took up residence in her mind's eye by pure dint of its strangeness.

Leah? Leah! Leah you can hear me Leah Leah Leah Leah eeeeeeeEEEEEEE Leah it's ME it's Mintie you can finally hear me!

_″Mintie!?”_

There was no point not saying it out loud. For all she knew she was the last person on Earth.

Mintie was the doll and imaginary friend from childhood Leah had clung to in the absence of flesh-and-blood friends.

In the absence of _real_ friends--grade school had been unkind and she'd been smart which everyone _knew_ but didn't _say_ wasn't very feminine--but of course cliques and "friends" were required of her.

They’d been inseparable until her womanhood had come and her mother had pointedly read her I Corinthians 13:11 ( _When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things._ ) and...that had been that. Mintie went into the closet without so much as a good-bye tea-party and Leah set about the hard work of Growing Up.

Couldn't they have at least had one more cup of the mint tea which for which Mintie was named?

The mental image she’d caught was Mintie, as if Mintie were properly human and not a huge soft ragdoll in navy-blue PJs in the old-fashioned cut her mother had worn. She’d been named Mintie after Leah’s obsession then-as-now with mint-flavored things, but...

“Why are you naked?”

Naked girls again...wait a minute.

Um...

This was exactly the kind of awful heartless trick he would play, too. Nice try, Satan. Trying to square what was happening with scripture, her mind raced. None of this was directly mentioned anywhere, but...Revelation 20:12, maybe? _And I saw those who had died, great and small, standing before the throne. Some books were opened. And another book was opened—the book of life. The people were judged by what they had done, which is written in the books._

_...I thought that's what you would like._

It was a stretch, but maybe she'd died and didn't know it, or been taken up into another world at the moment of her death like in _The Last Battle_. Anything seemed possible right now. The verse wasn't specific about what the judging process would entail, and you _could (as many did)_ read it as saying that this judgment would happen to those not taken up immediately in the Rapture as she hadn't been, or that it would happen to _everyone--_

Please don't turn away! It's me, Leah, Mintie! You know me, I know you know me, I've been with you like, _forever!_

She studiously ignored the voice, and tried not to envision either naked or clothed Mintie for a moment, but the overwhelming desire to rush to her closet and snatch Mintie out of her box of keepsakes to cradle her one more time clawed at her heart so that tears welled up in her eyes.

Why had she kept Mintie in the closet? Not for Jessy's sake, to be sure, who counter to her cool exterior had an entire stuffed zoo on her bed--no. She wouldn't go for it--

Please Leah it's ME don't you remember I always talked just like I do now when we'd have tea parties. You know me you know my voice PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU JUST TALK!

The verse was useless, it was far too much of a stretch. Maybe--her phone was in her hand poised to pull up her Bible app and start digging before she realized what she was doing, but she stopped short as she unlocked it, finding Twitter still open.

#wishwithme was still scrolling by:

All my friends just wished. Alone now. Trying to get the courage to wish. Going through my closet door, heh. Please send good vibes if you're still around to read this. #wishwithme #demoncarry #rapture

her say she was from Earth but had a past life on another plane and got separated from her twin flame who is the succubus she's carrying I bet. I'm going back for another journey to see how much further back from the moment I can reach. #demoncarry #wishwithme

Don't be like the dwarves #takenout #demoncarry #wishwithme

Uncomprehending and somehow rattled by this last tweet, she tapped back to #rapture:

My God My God why have you foresaken me #rapture #tribulation

Jesus is Lord whether he’s speaking to me or not. #rapture #trialstime

Slowly, she lowered her phone. This wasn't just her, or her and her roommates. Somehow, irrationally, that canceled out all thought she had of finding a verse of scripture that could help her, or a theological solution to this. Whatever was going on was beyond that.

Tara had warned her that one day God would set her a test she couldn't think her way out of.

"Dwarves" she finally realized was a reference to the ending sequence of _The Last Battle,_ where Aslan, notably, _opened a door_ to His country and let the entire population of Narnia out through it, leaving a bunch of stubborn dwarves sitting in a circle on the threshold of Heaven, supposedly in the stable the Narnia-side of the door had been the entrance to and unable to see anything else because they thought they'd been tricked again after being bamboozled with a fake Aslan based in the same stable.

"So afraid of being taken in, they could not be taken out," Aslan had said gravely of them.

Her face screwed up and the first tears squeezed out of her eyes before her phone hit the floor, and by the time she'd extracted--Mintie's doll--from her closet and clutched it to her chest she was as Edmund Pevensie would have put it _blubbing._

Then just bawling, curled up on her bed she'd somehow reached while her mind and heart were elsewhere.

I can be the doll again just wish for it and I will be! I want to so I can hug you.

It was the most natural thing, the reopening of an imaginative storybook made of pages of memory and bound with her own heartstrings she'd had to hold closed with all her very grown-up strength. She relented, and she felt Mintie's presence move into the doll without ceasing to be within her, and Mintie was the doll again and not just a voice in her head and though she was just a doll and didn't spring to life like Pinocchio Leah felt her hug all the same just like she always had and the real floodgates of her tears were opened.

She had no idea how long she lay there, bawling at the top of her lungs. Long. Until she was worn out and wanted comforting mint tea, which wrung a whole new round of sobs from her as she remembered tea parties with Mintie when she was small.

"I'm so sorry, Mintie! I put you away--"

You didn't know I was real. I don't think I _was_ real yet.

Leah sniffled and hugged Mintie tighter.

"I'm not imagining you?"

Nope! I'm the real Mintie!

"Are you real because of the Rapture?"

I'm real because you wished for me.

I don't know how I know that. I just know it.

"Okay."

She'd just seen her roommates disappear into thin air. There...wasn't _space_ to worry about the how and why of what was happening, it was just _happening_ and, and, and she was alone and she needed Mintie and here was Mintie...

I don't think we can stay here, Leah.

"I know. The world is over. What are we going to do, Mintie?"

Leah rolled on her back and hugged Mintie to her.

Leave. We need to go.

"Where? How can anyone be Raptured without God?"

You had the dream too, right?

No Bible verse came to mind. She had nothing for this situation.

"Yeah, but, I still don't want to go to Hell!"

Why would we go to Hell?

"I thought the girl in the dream was carrying a succubus?"

That was what the tweet had called it, anyway.

Leah's mind raced, trying to catch and rein in her heart, but it was no use. Hadn't she ever actually loved God?

How could you truly love your jailer? She recoiled from herself, shocked at the sudden bitterness. He'd been kind, often, and comforted and provided for her, and...and it was his own wrath she'd begged for mercy from. Earth was fallen because of a sin thousands and thousands of years ago and now she was stuck with the consequences. She was a sinner, yes, but if not for Eve she wouldn't be. What kind of justice was that? Why hadn't God done anything to actually _fix_ original sin? He sent his own son to die on the cross and here she still was, liking her suddenly-real imaginary friend better than Jesus!

She knew perfectly well it was an emotional argument, and a thin one at that, but she needed to be mad at him right now or more like she _was_ mad at him and her mind needed to pretend it was keeping up with this new development...

"Mintie?"

I'm waiting for you to finish thinking.

"I'm done."

Are you ready to go?

"I don't understand. What was that dream?"

Home. It's my home. I don't know how I know but it's where we belong, and it's good.

"But she was carrying a demon, and--"

Leah blushed, but...Mintie had the dream too, it sounded like everyone had. She would have seen the same thing.

"--and they were naked just like the way--"

Leah blushed harder but refused to stop mid-sentence.

"--the way it always is when I get attacked! It's from the Devil!"

You mean all the dreams and stuff about naked girls, right?

"...yeah..."

How could Mintie be so, so _blase_ about this? How could she _know?_

Um, Leah, you know I love you, right? BFFs for F?

Leah smiled at their old silly redundant acronym, and nodded.

"I love you, too."

All of that was from me, Leah, every single dream and vision.

"What!? Why!? You're not the Devil!"

I was trying to show you things you would like, so you would want to play with me.

That's why I was naked when you first saw me tongiht, too.

"I don't understand. I'm--I--why would you think I--"

The right thing to say here was "you're not Mintie".

Unfortunately, she couldn't actually believe that.

This was Mintie, and Mintie wouldn't lie to her, or make a mistake about what she liked, or run out of boy demons, or make fun of her by sending her "mixed up" spiritual attacks. Mintie knew her, and Mintie had known, and loved her as she was, though it was against God's plan-- _to Hell with God's plan._

There. She'd said it and meant it. Let her be damned.

"You're a demon. You look different but you're like the one in The Dream. You're--you're a succubus but somehow you're my Mintie too and it's not a lie and you actually mean it when you say you love me and you wanted me to 'play' with you because you were hungry and you want it to be me because you love me--wait."

She held the doll up above her face, as if looking Mintie in the eye could solve this mystery.

"I should have, should have--can't you not--don't I have to be a boy to feed you? Like, I don't make, um..."

I get good food from you. It's the warmth of your heart that feeds me. Yes, I want it to be you because I love you, and yes, I think the succubus in The Dream is one of my kind and we have lots of different shapes, and YES I'M YOUR MINTIE AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!

Leah reeled, and wondered if it was the Earthquake that was supposed to go with the red moon or just her head. She wasn't ready for this. She wasn't ready for any of it, and yet, she'd just said all of that as if saying it would make it true, as if she could preempt the questions by supplying the answers she needed.

Mintie's vehemence on the last point was really comforting.

"I won't."

Good.

I think it's time to go. I can smell the way! Your bedroom door doesn't have to go to the hall, if we wish it goes somewhere else! That's how our side of the rapture works."

"How do you know?"

I like, just know. I feel like I read it in a book but it doesn't really feel real.

"I don't want to go to Hell! Everyone else got Raptured, and I know the dream said--"  


I promise it's not Hell. She said the choice is real, remember?

"I--"

It's time to grow up, Leah.

This was not what you expected to hear from your childhood imaginary friend who was somehow become a sex demon.

"What?"

It's time to grow up. Growing up means accepting what's true and what's true is that the story God told you about the world turned out not to be true and you have to accept that, just like you have to accept that I'm real and you're gay and that it really is the end of the world.

Leah's breath caught, because she knew what was coming, what reference Mintie would use.

Don't be like the dwarves. I promise the door doesn't go to Hell or any stupid stable, not unless you think it does so much you can't imagine anywhere else it could go.

Growing up means being able to believe in goodness even when you're really hurt and scared.

More tears rolled down Leah's cheeks. She'd been cold, hadn't realized even now how betrayed she felt.

Please be grown up for me. I need my Leah.

Leah looked at the books on her top shelf, the books she really cared about--Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Space Trilogy, and remembered the line from the Silver Chair about being on Aslan's side even if there wasn't any Aslan, and the stuff in _That Hideous Strength_ about the Objective Room wrecking people's sense of right and wrong by starting with wrecking their sense of aesthetics and suddenly the words of the girl in the dream rang clear: _actually look._ She hadn't asked for Leah to renounce God or break any commandments or _anything._ Just _look_. The last dying embers of her faith weren't what was holding her back from this.

She thought about the Objective Room, and how many sermons she'd heard that sounded like the things they'd said in the book to try and convince the protagonist to stop listening to his own sense of good and bad, right and wrong.

All at once, Leah understood that most people hadn't had The Dream. Mintie had it because Leah had, but there was no way her roommates could have had it without Tara mentioning it--everything remotely resembling spiritual activity or prophesy was front-page news to her. The Dream wasn't _for_ them. They weren't going to look, no matter what anyone said. Leah needed The Dream because she needed to learn to see goodness in _itself_ instead of the Right Answer, to see the goodness in the eyes of a demon, so that when the time came she would be able to look with open eyes and see what was true, was noble, was right, was pure, was lovely, was admirable, was excellent or praiseworthy, and not judge it by shallow labels or simple appearances--or by rules God or anyone else had laid down.

I--

"Okay."

Leah stood, and held Mintie tight in her arms, and didn't give herself time to not start walking towards her bedroom door.

"Wish with me, Mintie."

Yes!

I wish--

_Take us someplace good, and safe._

Her foot crossed the threshold of the doorway, and everything felt normal, but when it hit the ground and her weight shifted onto it the world _changed_.

Whoah!

Leah you did it!

Take me inside so I can kiss you!

Oh. Yeah we should probably wait a sec.

Leah blinked, uncomprehending, mainly aware that she'd left without changing into proper clothes, at the vista that greeted them:

_An auditorium!?_

But the domed ceiling and giant stadium-shaped room couldn't be anything else. Lights hung in the blackness of the rafters, and in front of her a kindly smiling man in jeans and a vintage-looking T-shirt held his hand out to shake. There were others, an entire flotilla of greeters, and hundreds of people streaming into the space around Leah as she stood dumbfounded for the second time tonight.

"Hi!" 

His voice was bright and relaxed.

"Not what you expected, huh? Everything is going to be okay, you _are_ in paradise, and you're not damned or left behind. My name's Greg."

He was warm and jovial and like every nice and gentle and comforting church service greeter she'd ever said hi to all rolled into one and his mere _presence_ drew something up in her, set her on a course she could understand through what would otherwise be a completely mindbreaking night. If there were greeters and pews and bright lights hanging up in darkness where you couldn't see what kind of light they were and the bustle of distracted people getting seated there would be a Service and that was something she could understand. All she had to do right now was introduce herself.

"I'm Leah and this is Mintie."

By the time she'd freed a hand to shake Greg's, it was too late to _not_ introduce her apparently-not-imaginary friend the ragdoll. She blushed hotly, but Greg was utterly unfazed, as if this happened to him fifty times a day.

Hi Greg!

"Nice to meet you, Leah, Mintie. We're just about to start if you want to take a seat, or we can go right to a prayer team if you need some building-up first."

"I'm--I'll take a seat."

Greg smiled, and gestured.

"I think there's some still free up front, but it won't matter where you sit. In heaven every seat is the best seat."

What's that mean?

"The rules of space and distance here are the rules of love. It's easier to see than explain. Can I show you?"

"That's okay."

Leah was feeling overwhelmed and wanted to hide in the center of a pew as soon as she could--wait, he--

"You heard her?"

"Yes. Your friend is an excellent dreamtalker."

Thanks!

"I have to go thank you."

Tears welled up and Leah rushed instinctively for the pew closest the stage, as she always did. Even up to this moment there had been a part of her curled in on itself, desperately afraid Mintie was just in her head, and Greg's easy acknowledgement of her existence had broken open a new vault of emotion that would require some crying Leah hoped she would be able to do while rushing the length of the auditorium.

Mintie hugged tightly--she could feel it, despite the doll's still just being a ragdoll--as she ran, and by the time she reached the front-center spot she was drying her eyes and mostly-composed.

And still in her PJs, but so was everyone else.

Please turn me around so I can see?

Whoah, that's what he meant. Cool!

Leah look it's them!

Leah dried her eyes, and focused in the general direction of the stage, and--for a second she thought she'd lost her sight or run to entirely the wrong place. The stage seemed less than ten feet away, and the red-carpeted space in front of the pew was much larger than she remembered, but as she craned around to look back at the congregation she saw that she'd ended up exactly where she'd intended, right up front in the middle. Looking back, everything seemed normal, but that there was something strange about the way people seemed to be filing into the pews, as if each one had a ten-foot space in front of it despite looking from this angle like they weren't any deeper than normal pews.

She turned back, and had another go at understanding the view of the stage, got it this time, and just in time. The girl from the Dream, now dressed in a revealing light-blue nightie with matching sandals was leading her demon--who was still just plain naked, and seemed to somehow have _transparent_ arms and legs--on a leash down the stairs from the front of the stage and ooh _**no** they were coming this way!_

They're headed this way! We should introduce ourselves!

Leah scrunched down in the pew, trying to make herself and Mintie as invisible as the demon's boots, but--thank, thank _someone--_ they paid her no mind and took the empty seat next to her whereupon the demon draped itself over the blonde girl as if they were about to make out right there in front of everyone.

At the same time, the band rescued her by starting the first song. It was soothing and worship-songy and within a few bars she recognized the intro to Oceans despite the unfamiliar band. Leah only realized how weird singing a worship song would be if what she understood about what was happening were true as the lyrics flicked onto a projector-screen she was _sure_ hadn't been there a second ago and _definitely_ weren't the lyrics to _Oceans._ The unfamiliar Lyrics didn't seem to phase Mintie one bit:

_You call me out beneath the waters_

_The great unknown where shadows creep_

Hey, why aren't you singing? This is grreat!

_And there I find that in the darkness_

"I..."

She remembered all the times they'd sung together in church. Mintie's voice was just the same as it had always been.

Sing it's fun!

_In Havens Deep_

But the words were so strange. What was this song _saying?_

_Our love will soar_

As the chorus began, the stage suddenly seemed to become a movie screen for a 3D movie-- apparently movies here didn't need 3D glasses to be 3D--about the ocean. A giant squid zoomed past and snatched the stage in a tentacle, pulling the whole room 'down' into the deep towards glowing lights in the distance.

COOL! Wasn't that cool?

_And we will dwell in Rl'yeh Sade_

Please sing with me?

_And find our home beneath the waves_

As the squid pulled them down, the lights became a sort of underwater city, strange shapes floating in the water.

_Where statues fuck, my heart will rest in your embrace_

_That_ was a weird line, but in the movie the underwater city turned out to made of, well, statues _doing it._

_For we are home in Rl'yeh Sade_

There were a _lot_ of ways to _do it,_ and the statues were all shapes and sizes. If the statues represented the things the people who lived in this city approved of, there wasn't much they _didn't_ approve of.

Look how many of the statues are gay!

Mintie's voice was smiling, pleased, not horrified.

Oooh, that looks fun!

On the screen they'd just zoomed along the side of a building or mountain or something where a tiny statue of a girl was tied up with something that Leah thought looked more like hands than rope, being, being _penetrated_ by the finger of a statue four times its size so that the finger was bigger than--Leah had to look away for a moment, cheeks red.

Beside her, the demon and blonde girl _did_ start making out--they'd been singing together, before, and they were both _loud--_ and it was too much, she had to move, the pew wasn't the place to be, she leapt up and with Mintie clasped carefully under an arm started clapping with the beat almost without knowing what she was doing and when the verse started and the music surged it carried her into singing like riptide:

_"In Haven Deep below the waters,"_

YAY YOU'RE SINGING!!!

She was, careless and loud, shouting the pent-up adrenaline of the night out into the music.

_"Our Monstrous love"_

Mintie's voice cut through the others in her mind, and she could feel the reverberation of sound in her chest, but her voice was lost in the choir of voices from the congregation and with it, her heart.

She stole a glance back at the demon and blonde girl. They were demonstrating the "Monstrous love" lyric pretty well, and she felt her eyes linger for a moment on their forms as she turned back to read the next lyric.

_"will be our guide"_  


It felt like flying.

"No stopping unless it's to dance!"

The underwater scenery was replaced for a moment with a huge image of the demon and blonde girl interrupting their kiss, and everyone laughed, including--to her surprise--Leah.

_"Where hearts of stone may beat with lo-ve"_

The worship band were _good._ The music was getting inside her, filling cracks, opening her heart, like a real worship service.

_"We'll find our way to who we are"_

Blonde girl and her demon leapt out of their seat, joined hands, and started dancing _with each other_ , laughing. Leah winced in sympathy as Blonde Girl obviously forgot she wasn't wearing a sports bra--and then raised her eyebrows when Blonde Girl seemingly decided not to care and started bouncing madly with her demon as they danced. It was, now that she'd admitted to herself once about the nature of her temptations, hard to take her eyes off them, and suddenly she wished for Mintie's naked form to return.

Whee!

Just like that, Mintie was back within her as a fantasy with a mind of its own and the doll was just a doll again, and Mintie-in-her-mind was naked again, and beautiful.

_"So we will dwell in Rl'yeh Sade"_

And dancing, bouncing with an occasional glance over her shoulder as if to look back at the lyrics.

_"And make our home beneath the waves"_

Mintie smiled, as she caught Leah _looking_ , and Leah found herself smiling too.

_"Where statues fuck, my heart will rest in your embrace"_

You think I'm hot!

It wasn't mocking, or self-satisfied, the way Mintie said it. It was... _touched_. She said it like she was saying "I love you too". In any other situation there was no way Leah could have responded to this at all, but the music was a flood of emotion that swept them along and demanded terrible and holy transformations, a deluge of liquid Conversion Experience crafted by one of the most skillful worship leaders in the world and honed to perfection albeit for another purpose by whoever the red-haired woman on the stage was, and so instead Leah nodded to Mintie, and _kept looking._

_"For we are home in Rl'yeh Sade"_

Mintie _was_ hot. She seemed small, though in Leah's mind's eye there was nothing to compare to, but she had long brown hair just like her doll, full soft breasts that Leah felt strange looking at because shouldn't a doll not have nipples, black eyes (not the scary demon-eyes kind, they just had dark irises) that narrowed with pleasure in a way that made Leah's PJs feel too-tight and too-loose at the same time as she looked, and--no, she'd started, she would keep looking--trim hips with a triangle of bare skin between them that got pinker at the center where Mintie's...her...Leah's mental eyes ran back to Mintie's face, but that was no better, with the way Mintie was looking at her now. She had pink little lips in her face--in her face _too_ , thought a renegade part of Leah's mind--that were parted just slightly, and she seemed to be breathing slowly.

There was a pink bow in Mintie's hair, just like her doll, but looking at that didn't stop Leah from hearing Mintie's face say _kiss me_. She hadn't thought she'd know much about stuff like that, but she supposed it _would_ be kind of built in.

Her heart pounded, her head spun, the music thudded inside and around her, and Mintie looked so hopeful...Leah reached out with imagined arms, found Mintie to be tiny like her doll but somehow this didn't matter at all as their lips met and Mintie's warm, soft mouth slipped around her imagined one. It was a little tricky, she had to imagine the details of the kiss to allow Mintie to take part, but it was surprisingly possible even though she'd never been kissed physically to feel the kind heat of Mintie's breath and the way their noses brushed...they pulled apart for a minute, looked into each others' eyes, and then dove back in and Leah learned that she was alright at imagining Mintie's tongue and that Mintie was pretty good at doing interesting things with.

When they had to stop because Leah couldn't concentrate on the kiss and the lyrics her physical eyes were involuntarily reading and that her physical mouth was trying to sing at the same time, Mintie smiled a huge, beaming smile, and Leah felt hot and breathless in her body even though the kiss had been in spirit.

They sung the next verse together, with Mintie's skin warm against the bare flank Leah unaccountably had the courage to imagine for Mintie to cuddle against:

_"Monster show us the deep lights in hearts of darkness"_

_"Let us walk the path of Monsters"_

_"With deep love for one another"_

_"Take us deeper than our dreams could ever show us"_

_"to the wondrous lights below us"_

_"In the hearts of Monstrous lovers."_

Leah...hehe, look!

"Hmm?"

Beside them, demon and Blonde Girl were gripping each other's hands and spinning, _fast_ , their hair and the demon's tail streaming out with the speed of it. Leah giggled to see it, and squidged a little to the right to give them space, closer to the confused-looking but gamely-clapping boy to her right.

_"And we will dwell in Rl'yeh Sade"_

_"And find our home beneath the waves"_

_"Where statues fuck, my heart will rest in your embrace"_

Leah actually managed not to stumble over the cussword this time.

_"For we are home in Rl'yeh Sade"_

As the outro began, Blonde Girl and her demon drew together and became a gold-and-silver blur spinning dangerously fast, and then collapsed on each other so violently Leah started and rushed to offer a hand down and ask if they--

I'm glad you're helping but you should ask if you're taking her sub's job.

_What,_ Leah imagined herself saying to Mintie, and Mintie seemed to hear, though her response wasn't the explanation Leah wanted:

Just ask. I'll explain after.

The music changed, and Leah perked up as she heard the intro to The Breaskfast Song by the Newsboys, old but beloved.

Hurry!  


Leah started to ask, and then stopped, and tried not to stare, but it didn't work. It hadn't been visible in The Dream because of her demon's dangling wings, but Blonde Girl had a huge penis which was now poking up out of her mussed-up nightie, and bouncing with Blonde Girl's heartbeat. Leah's own heart raced a bit with the embarrassment ( _why wasn't Blonde Girl Wearing Underwear oh you're not supposed to with a nightie like that and if she's dressing like **that** she probably doesn't wear underwear at all_ involuntarily followed _**ARGH** THE REST OF HER IS SO PRETTY_ through Leah's head).

Leah _had_ always thought penises were gross, which was probably a good sign of being a lesbian she now realized, and it's not that she _didn't_ think this one was gross so much as it was _confusing_ : it wasn't veiny or wrinkly, and it had pretty blue sparkley butterflies all over it which was kind of cute in a gradeschool kind of way.

As Leah stared, it got soft, and shrank enough that Blonde Girl could flip her nightie over it and meet Leah's eyes. She was at least blushing appropriately much.  


Hurry Leah, we need to sing!

"Am...am I taking your sub's job?" Her voice would barely work.

Blonde girl was entangled in her demon, giggling--the demon had a pretty voice, like some kind of electric violin--and was pretty but much less pretty than Mintie but still pretty and wasn't really wearing anything and Leah had just _kissed a girl and liked it and YES she'd been there for everyone disapproving of the song_ and now regretted offering this help very much but it was too late now...Blonde Girl shook her head no, no what, right, that must mean Leah wasn't taking her sub's job. She took Leah's hand and pulled herself up, almost knocking Leah down in the process--she was _big,_ and _HEAVY,_ and hadn't seemed it because she was also in the most terrifyingly perfect shape Leah had ever seen and was just a large person. Only her demon and Mintie were more unnaturally, flawlessly perfect...no. Nothing was as perfect as Mintie or ever could be.

Leah wasn't used to this, being usually the tallest girl in the room. The way Blonde Girl towered over her made Leah feel strange.

"Thanks."

Blonde Girl turned around and pulled on her demon's leash. It stood up, looking like it thought getting pulled by a leash was as good as kissing, and Leah supposed demons probably would like _that_ sort of thing, but she couldn't imagine Mintie on a leash--

Um Leah, she said thanks.

Ooops. "You're welcome."

Introduce us, silly!

There really was no escape. She had to shout over the music: "I'm Leah and this is Mintie!"

Hi!

Oh no, she'd introduced the doll again, and--what was wrong? Blonde Girl was looking at them like she was about to cry?

She tugged her demon's leash and it stepped up beside her.

"I'm Butterfly and this is Cocksleeve. Wave hi, Cocksleeve."

Her demon--Cocksleeve, which Leah supposed she should have expected as a demon's name--waved enthusiastically, face bright. Demons were friendly? Mintie was of course, but Mintie was special, no-one was like Mintie in the whole universe.

Nice to meet you!

Leah blushed some more, because though she'd seen that--that Butterfly's demon was naked before, having her stand up right in front of Leah and wave hello with a cute little happy-wave made it _count_ and Leah was still shocked by Butterfly's having a penis (it made a bulge in her dress when she moved). Why wasn't she getting in trouble for being naked--well, probably because Butterfly's nightie was almost worse than her being naked. What kind of place were they in?

Mintie prodded Leah privately:  


Nudge nudge nudge.

Oops again. "Nice to meet you."

Leah sagged with relief when it was time to pay attention and sing. Like _Oceans,_ the lyrics turned the song on its head so that instead of being about the singer's newly departed friend, it was about the band's newly _arrived_ friend, underlining what Greg had said about this being paradise. Interestingly, they left the line about how they don't serve breakfast in Hell--oh, that was the point. As soon as the chorus started, clones of the singer started serving breakfast to a parade of demons in the 3D movie that took up the stage. It was confusing: the guitarists were wearing red varsity jackets with strange symbols, but the message seemed to be a pretty clear "even if the customers are demons, this can't be Hell, because we're serving breakfast".

The band kept going, but the singer suddenly stopped singing, and the 3D movie now showed _The Dream_ in perfect, vivid detail like someone had had a film crew recording it.

There was a newscaster explaining The Dream in the background, and they made it sound like...Butterfly had started the Rapture!? No, her and a lot of other people, working together--and they hadn't been trying to start the Rapture, just change how people thought about Christianity. The Rapture had surprised everyone.

It said "trillions" of locations, which was weird and made it sound like there must be more places than Earth getting raptured (not hyperbole, she didn't think--the newscaster sounded like the kind of person who would ask you how many 'a zillion' was) and that no-one would get left behind. That was comforting.

Visually, it was exactly The Dream, but the added detail was...she could understand why her spiritual eyes hadn't been able to take it in when it came to her. Butterfly and her demon were there, just like in The Dream, but behind them was...stained glass, pictures, like church in summertime when the sun came in the windows so bright it looked like nothing but the windows existed.

The scene ended about where The Dream had and changed to show people walking through doors in different places, popping into existence looking confused and surprised just like Leah supposed she had. Some of the pictures were from what looked like this very auditorium. Some were _definitely_ not Earth unless there was a place on Earth where islands floated in the sky among the clouds with pretty multi-colored buildings on them. That place really looked like Heaven.

The newscast ended just in time for the singer to sing the last three lines of Breakfast before the song ended:

_"When the Big One finds you"_

_"May this song remind you"_

_"That they don't serve breakfast in hell"_

There was a pause, and the singer squared up in the middle of the stage, looking important.

"This is a big moment for me. In some ways you might say I've been getting ready for it all my life."

Leah would eat her Bible if this wasn't the beginning of a Testimony.

If her Bible weren't in another universe. The verse-finding part of her sort of _tripped_ and came up with a C.S. Lewis quote instead:

_“Bother!” said Edmund. “I’ve left my new torch in Narnia.”_  


"I was taught I was supposed to look forward to it, to hope it was comin' any day now, an' pray for Jesus to come back an' make everythin' okay. That's how Mrs. Cherry Senior explained to me when I was two. She told me to pray for it to happen every day, an' I did."

"Yes I was an early talker."

"When I was seven _Mister_ Cherry Senior sent me to Bible Camp, and they showed me the other side, of what might happen should I get left behind when the trumpets blew. There was this movie, not the newfangled Hollywood ones I've been hearin' about of late, about it. It started out with this little girl wakin' up, seven years old, and her mom an' pop are nowhere to be found."

They played a few seconds of footage from what must have been like an old version of the Left Behind movies as the singer said this.

"They said it was necessary, so we would understand the burden of sin upon our souls and the desperate need to be saved. Of course I prayed the prayer then and there, like a good little sinner-girl, but when you're a seven year old child there is no description of hellfire or damnation that can _begin_ to approach the thought of wakin' up one day to find your mom an' pop just _gone._ "

"Of course I didn't sleep a wink that night, or the next one, or the next. They told me if I prayed the prayer and meant it my salvation was sure. It didn't matter a whack to me, especially not once I figured out doubtin' my salvation was probably a sin in an' of itself."

"Some of you may relate to my little tale so far, and some of you may think the Bible camp I attended had some theological catching up to do, but either way I eventually got over that mess of a conversion experience and moved on to become a proper Christian woman as sure of God's grace as the next good spreader of the Word--which is to say, not very."

"It wore at me, that little seed of doubt prickin' away at my conscience every moment like that thorn in Paul's flesh, doubt drivin' me ever forwards to prove it wasn't there. Prayer meetings. Worship band. Mission trips. Summer Bible camp every year in between school terms, all through college too as a counselor."

It was a full-blown video testimony, and here was the slideshow of sad pre-conversion pictures of the singer, but they showed her at church, Bible camp, the places she was describing, and yet she did look pre-conversion sad in them, like a dark cloud hung over her.

"Superwoman, they called me, an' said I was truly on fire for God, when all the time I was driven by fear."

"I felt terrible for that, living by the fear of Hell when I was supposed to be promised to a loving God. Even comin' here and renouncing him an' all I did in his name, I thought that in the face of what I was shown I must have been this great coward not to let love be my strength, instead simply of fear."

"Now, watchin' all o' y'all walk int' my conference hall, watchin' trillions o' people out there find their way to a happily ever after o' their own an' _knowin'_ that by the end o' this not one single soul will be left behind because it's only those so far from it who see the way as straight an' narrow, I find myself thinkin' how utterly focused on instillin' fear my upbringin' was. Fear o' God, fear o' the Devil fear o' Hell fear o' bein' found out masturbatin' in the middle o' the night fear that cornflakes are a harbinger o' the new world order but most of _all_ fear o' bein' left behind! Was a world built on fear, like fear was the most important feelin' there was."

"That may seem to be of no account to you, or not even news, but what people do from fear I've learned in my life is mighty different to what they from love of others. If you want mercy, you inspire love. If you want justice, you inspire love. Not fear."

"If you need to destroy your enemy, and you don't yourself have the firepower to do it, you inspire fear."

"Christian soldiers march on."

There was a dramatic pause during which Leah could feel Butterfly's demon bristling like static electricity.

"I think you might be afraid like I was, even now. I think you might wonder if this is Hell--it sure ain't the Throne o' The Lamb, is it?--an' when I'm gonna commence torturing y'all."

"I ain't, an' neither is anyone else, so stop worryin' about your salvation. No, you didn't go to Heaven, but you didn't go to Hell, either. There's no reckonin' waitin' for you, no weighin' up all your sins before the Father, nothin'."

"Tonight you truly are free. You can stop bein' afraid now."

She turned the singer's word over in her mind, and tears welled up as the looming shadow that had hung over her soul since her getting Saved at the age of thirteen evaporated: _"Tonight you truly are free. You can stop bein' afraid now."_

"There's wonderful things in store for you in this place. You will live happily ever here. That's the Rock on which this world is founded. It's a world without war, without famine, without disease an' without death, a world where the curse o' work never came to Eve or Adam or anyone else. There's a home with your name on it already waitin' for you--or if you'd prefer I can give ya directions to the literal Garden of Eden, which never belonged to the Christian God or any other an' is full o' delightul fruit none o' which bring divine wrath down on you."

"Let's just take a silent moment to let that all sink in. This is it. It's over an' your real life can begin. No more runnin', no more being afraid. Let the tears come if they're gonna, you've earned yourself a cry, even if you're not the cryin' sort. You don' have t' be made o' steel any longer."

The altar call must be coming soon. The was getting solemn and quiet, and now she folded the mic into her hands like she was praying.

"Feel that? Already? I'm wrong, ain't I? Y'all _did_ go t' Heaven, an' y'all know it. It ain't the Christian God's realm, an' yet...feel that in th' air, under yer feet, like Christmas comin' or the first flowers o' spring. Somethin' deep inside y'all knows it, don't it, _knows_ that when y'all were bein' promised heaven as a little child before ya learned about all o' th' _requirements_ , this place, the world in which y'all now stand, _is that place."_

"Four Dreams were dreamt o' the perfect place t' live. The Garden, th' Perfect Isles, the Deep Haven, an' the Home o' the Brave. They were dreamt over an' over by trillions o' people from th' very start o' humankind's existence, an' they were dreamt so hard they got dreamt real an' now _here y'all stand._ "

"Now let's jus' let _that_ sink in fer a moment."

Leah?

Mintie's image in her mind wrapped its limbs around her and hugged tight, and she clutched back.

When the worship leader called for a cheer, it burst from Leah's--and everyone else's lung's with the force of a tidal wave. It died away suddenly, and Leah saw the--worship leader, sort of--was going on.

"We've been workin' a long, long time t' bring this day about, to give a true choice t' those who were told all their life they could take the devil's hand or kneel for God. All o' you out there in the crowd, you know what I'm talkin' about. The choice between one god who supposedly loves ya an' another who supposedly hates ya, but what if yer not fer followin' any god at all?"

"I'm part of a sorta-like, evangelical organization o' the godless, workin' t' get the word out that there's a third option, open a door outta the damned-if-ya-do-damned-if-ya-don't o' Christianity. Never in a million billion _years_ did I dream it would turn into literal _doors outta Earth,_ an' yet, here y'all are, an' I can only call it one thing."

"Humans an' demons, monsters, freaks, pre- an' post-millenialists, folks who figured readin' the Revelation to John like that was probably a sin but find yourselves here anways, this is it. _WELCOME TO THE RAPTURE!_ '"  


More cheering, even louder, from Leah, too, to her own suprise.

"Y'all're makin' me proud. You are _almost_ as loud as me at my first real rock show."

"Betcha never thought you'd actually cheer for it, didja?"

This actually got Leah to laugh.

"Now, all you demons an' those who ain't human an' just been born out there, your time has come, an' yes that's right I have _another testimony_ t' give y'all."

"Thank me later."

Cherry grinned ironically.

" _Suk'hora_ is the technical name, meanin' _erosynthetic individual,_ meanin' person whose food is the lust o' the humans around them, meanin' they soak up feelin's o' desire the way plants soak up light t' stay alive."

"Meanin' they ain't vampires! Y'all shine w' the light o' lust whether there's a Suk'hora--or _succubus_ if you speak Celestial Heartstring with a Roman accent--around t'preciate it or not, so don't go worryin' about their enojyin' your warmth wearin' you out, unless they're proposin' t' wear ya out the ol' fashioned way."

"That is not to say they aren't _full_ o' ways t' make sure we humans shine jus' as bright as we can at all times. Mainly, they take the form o' the deepest heart's desire o' the human they choose to grow up with, an' they can become damn near anythin', as you probably will see before the end of this show."

"They were baskin' in the light o' human lust for billions o' years before God started badmouthin' their kind an' blamin' his troubles rulin' on them, an' they as a whole prefer the taste o' happy feelin's, with a certain obvious result as to their relationship with humankind. They love you, is what I'm gettin' at. Torturin' the damned, _apparently_ , tastes _godsawful,_ unless o' course you're into that sort o' thing."

"I had trouble accepting mine, you know. My Dreams--that's what we call them, because they're _super hot,_ an' because they're the incarnated essence of your fantasies and wishes. Come up here for a second, boys."

The two guitarists came up beside Cherry on either side, and they all linked arms. Did that mean they were _all three_ together!?

"These here are Himmel--that's German for 'Earth'--and Holle--that's German for 'Heaven'--an' they I'm proud to say are my two twin Dreams. They were born on a stage, literally, with hardly _anyone_ watching. It's as well because I don't think the congregation of the Kansas City Assembly of Christ would have got it if they could have seen."

"Their bein' born wasn't where I stumbled, it was before that, while they were with me _inside_ \--aaah, I know that look of recognition, some of you already understand me and need to go talk to a prayer team if you're now too distressed to keep listenin' to me--I stumbled, and stumbled, and stumbled. Three times in one night, sometimes, I would stumble."

"I would hear their voices sometimes, sayin' my name like it was the mos' beautiful word in all languages, or sometimes lyin' in bed lonesome I'd see things, all of this in my head you understand and often enough my thoughts would already be drifting in a sinful direction but still...I could tell it was, well, demons."

"It was wonderful! They were always perfect gentlemen, and _oh so obedient..._ but ooooh no I was a good little Christian girl an' told those naughty demons to _beat it_ , in Jesus' name. I even thought I meant it sometimes!"

"Then one day I woke up in the middle of the night an' I was _convicted_ about this lust business _._ For those o' you new t' the faith, that's a technical theological term meanin' 'scared shitless of going to Hell'. I decided then an' there to go coooold turkey an' put an end to this for once an' all, an' for two whole years, I did. Froze my heart solid an' ran on coffee an' the fear o' Hell until one day it just broke back through, put me right back in my bed the night I got so scared--with the exact same feelin' of it being some kind of great an' terrible turnin' point. I flew out of bed, down the stairs then realized I was still wearin' my jammies jus' like about half o' you are _rushed_ back up stairs got ready for church _flew_ back down an' then stopped dead in the middle o' my livin' room as I realized it was about four in the mornin' an' even the old folks didn't have their service _that_ early."

"Fortunately for me my Sunday Best was cheap an' had a tag the size o'--well, big--jabbin' into my ass from the skirt an' so I was able to spend th' next four hours perched on the edge o' my couch like one o' those little fake birds with the stick up its ass bein' too uncomfortable to think about anything _interesting_."

"To this day one of the greatest miracles I have ever seen is how my roommates slept through all o' this. They thought I'd just got up, when they came down the stairs!"

"I knew they were bein' born, y'see, I could tell. I knew that my mos' kind an' sweet fantasies o' what a man could be, the dreams I'd been dreamin' an' lyin' to myself were jus' the nocturnal wandrin's o' my subconscious mind were about t' arrive in my life as flesh an' _bone_ an' I knew, I _knew_ that I would forever be changed by the mere sight o' them, _let alone_ bein' touched in the mos' inappropriate fashion I knew I would so dearly want."

"That was the most terrifyin' knowledge I've ever held. I was so scared I didn't even know what I knew. I think I could tell that if I should put words to what I was feelin', those words would be my damnation."

"I mean t' say damnation very specifically. These two sweet boys changed my life, they changed who I am an' what I stood for all in a night. Y'all know what the word conversion means t' Christians, and I'm sayin' it now, acceptin' their presence within the deepest darkest part o' my heart was a real an' true conversion experience, the fillin' o' a hole I bore from the cradle an' would have borne still as I crawled into the grave had these two not come an' filled me w' life eternal an' taken dyin' entirely off the table."

"Y'all think I'm bein' spiritually poetic like the worship leaders who make ya feel like yer givin' yer body t' Jesus when ya sing. I ain't, you'll see."

This seemed to be some kind of joke, because Cherry and Butterfly and her demon were all grinning.

"Bearin' one o' their kind--or two, or four, or fifteen (long story, very sweet family, _amazin'_ dance numbers)--dreamin' about it, playin' with it while fantasizin', jus' havin' it _there,_ I can't say how else t' describe it than that it's like havin' your own personal holy spirit who instead o' chastisin' ya for bein' greedy or slothful is mainly concerned you bein' a suitable an' sufficiently lustful companion for the companion who's growin' within the darkness o' your heart."

"If that sounds like it's steppin' close t' the Christian concept o' the indwellin' o' the Holy Spirit, yer misunderstandin' me."

"It is steppin' _on_ the concept. In yer heart there's a hole, because for billions an' billions o' years their kind an' ours have lived in love w' each other an' so we humans now have a place within oursleves where a spirit may dwell should we choose it to, but it ain't god-shaped, is it?"

"An' so that is damnation. Eternal separation from the Christian god, the utter departure from his plan fer yer life once an' for all an' replacin' the love o' Christ w' the affections o' someone else."

"Of course I feared that! Y'all're braver than I if ya don't. That's okay. They will love you anyhow. They will love you unconditionally 'till the end of time, an' you will take one look at them an' love them right back, believe you me."

"Now here's the mystery. I've just described damnation, an' yet, all o' the things Christians credit t' God shortly after their salvation, every single one outside o' goin' off to be judged on the last day, has come to me as a result o' my embracin' the love o' my two Dreams here. My art has soared. Depression that ate my soul like a whole _herd_ o' goats w' a tin can has lifted from me. I feel this terrible sense o' _purpose_ in my life, the kind that gets ya outta bed in the mornin' instead o' keepin' ya up all night w' thoughts o' how you're failin' t' fulfill it. All manner o' faults an' foibles I've carried from before I was walkin' have fallen away before my determination t' be a decent mama t' these two sweet boys here. It's so very much like salvation, an' yet, here's the mystery: had I tried to _use_ the precious gift o' havin' these two in my life to _make_ any o' that happen, I have th' utter faith that it would have failed _miserably_."

"Seek ye first the love an affection o' your dreams, an' all these things shall be added t' you."

"Book o' Cherry Pop, Chapter Remember this it's real important, verse Don't You Dare Forget it."

"That's all real wonderful if you have such a space in yer heart, or would like one made (it doesn't hurt) which I'm given to understand is the ol' fashioned way o' accomplishin' this, but if that's not for you, fear not. You are not required, an' you are not runnin afoul o' anyone's holy design by choosin' another path. There are many, many, t' choose from, an' though I slightly expect only those who will be followin' the path I'm describin' right now have come t' join us t'night, it bears sayin' just in case. If that's you, go see one o' my prayer teams, an' they can fill ya in."

This seemed like the end of the testimony; the singer was changing gears, getting out of the depth of the emotion.

"The rest o' you, I'm so sorry, but I have one more testimony to go before we play s'more music. I'd say keep yer shirts on, but I see it's already too late for some o' you."

Leah actually laughed out loud at this, then blushed hoping Butterfly's demon wouldn't think she was being pointed.

"I can put the words, now, to what I was feelin' then, but I have a couple things to say, first."

"First, why all am I tellin' you this in the middle of the freakin' _Rapture?_ Well, because unless I miss my guess, not a few o' you are finding some or all o' this tale _extremely_ relatable, an' I want you not t' suffer as I did."

"They're good, an' they're kind, an' they love you. How can you know that, Cherry, well, I know. I promise you, on all that is still sacred to me which is quite a lot as we'll get to soon, if you look inside an' find one o' them growin' there, that person will be what you have always dreamed love could be. I know my boys here are."

"So don't be afraid, an' if you can't help it, turn to one o' my prayer teams an' let them help you not be afraid. Better yet, _be_ afraid, an' let them love you anyway."

"Secondly, for those o' you who might be relatin' especially to the final part o' my story, one, _please_ go see one o' my prayer teams, an' _two_ , I should mention that their kind are born full-grown an' of marriagable age an' no it does not hurt unless you happen to have a condition which makes orgasms painful."

"The reason for your needin' to know that other than it bein' comfortin' is that what I did next after sittin' like I was in church for half the night was to go sit in church for another hour an' then climb up on the stage an' give birth to these two."

Leah looked at Mintie, and Mintie looked back and nodded, and Leah leapt from her seat and charged down the aisle to where what Tara always called a Cloud of Witnesses was hovering around the nearest prayer team. Her heart sank as she realized she would have to wait, but a girl in a glittering blazer totally covered in very _very_ convincing faux diamonds nudged between a pair of Conversations and came up to her, smiling sweetly.

"Hi, I'm Molnie. How can I be there for you?"

"I, my, she--"

I'M BEING BORN!

Molnie's expression went serious, but still happy, and she held out a hand to Leah.

"Let's go talk to one of the midwives, and find out how far along you are and what you need to have a fun birth--if you'd like I can use the word _incarnation_ instead. Some people find that more comfortable. This way..."

Molnie was leading them away from the group, while Leah's mind lagged behind trying to absorb the words "fun birth"--maybe "incarnation" would be better...they were walking through a doorframe Leah hadn't seen before, uselessly freestanding except for what she'd just been learning about doors tonight and then a step with Molnie's hand on her elbow brought them through the doorframe and into a room that wasn't the auditorium _at all_ and the sounds of the crowd vanished like unplugged headphones.

This is so romantic!

Mintie was right. The new room was soft, with a big white bedstead with a floofy comforter turned back to reveal silk sheets and pillows against one wall, windows on a beautifully brilliant starscape opposite the bed, and a matching big white couch with a ton of throw pillows under the window. The lights were down low, romantic.

Leah blushed hard, realizing what was probably about to have to happen for Mintie to be born, but something steeled in her, too, as her heart opened to the envy she'd felt looking at Butterfly with her succubus--she knew the way they looked at each other, because it was how Mintie and Leah looked at each other, but while Mintie was a voice in her head and very vivid fantasy with a mind of its own, Butterfly's succubus was a being of (presumably) living flesh and bone and not a ragdoll.

"Lesha will be right in--she's the midwife. Would you like me to wait with you, or would you like a moment alone? Lesha's femme, but if you'd like it better I can call for a masculine midwife or another gender--oh no, she won't be helping directly unless you ask, I'm just making sure you'll feel comfortable with her."

Leah blushed harder as she realized how her face must have betrayed her as Molnie spoke.

_Another_ gender? How many did they have?

I like the name Lesha.

Leah nodded when Molnie looked to see if this was okay with Leah as well.

It sounds like Leah!

This had been privately to Leah, but it made her smile outwardly. Molnie noticed, but seemed to guess that Mintie had said something sweet.

"Would you like me to stay for the birth?"

"That's...that's okay."

There was a knock at the door, which had apparently closed behind them, and a slight girl with orange hair and soft features let herself in, mercifully diverting Leah from inspecting the obviously and ostentatiously sexy decor. Molnie waited for the door to snick shut and then with a wave and a flourish of glittering sleeves threw it open again and stepped out.

Lesha held out her arms in offer of a hug, which Leah found herself gratefully accepting, then lead them to the couch which turned out to be curved so that Leah and Lesha could sit comfortably sort-of opposite each other, and also turned out to be the most comfortable piece of furniture Leah had ever used.

When they were settled, Lesha smiled kindly.

"Congratulations, to all of you."

"Thanks."

Thanks!

Lesha's voice was gentle and quiet, and sounded like the smell of violets. If her goal was to be comforting, it was already working.

All of us?

"I'm not assuming you're singular. I know there's one of you incubating and one of you being incubated. Is that everyone?"

Leah's eyes widened as she realized that the singer had talked the whole time about her _twins_.

I think I'm the only su'khora.

She wasn't sure if she should sigh in relief or disappointment.

"What about you? Are you singular?"

What a weird question. Leah nodded, and Lesha smiled.

"Okay. Before we introduce ourselves, let's make sure there's time. How are you both feeling?"

Despite the implication in what she was saying, Lesha's voice was like having someone put their hand over yours and tell you it was going to be okay.

Like something's happening. I thought it was just being able to have her see and hear me when before she couldn't but it's not that.

"And you?"

Now that Mintie mentioned it, and the couch was so impossibly comfortable, and Lesha was so _soothing_ , yes

"I feel weird, yeah, like something's happening. It's all, all, fluttery and I feel kind of full inside my chest."

"Are you feeling horny at all?"

Leah gulped, and wondered if she would know what being gay-horny felt like--oh. Lesha was pretty. Molnie had been nice-looking in her flamboyant suit. Butterfly and her succubus were so pretty it hurt to look at them and Mintie was a million billion times prettier than all of _them_ put together and yet even with that shining star in the sky to blot the rest out every girl she saw seemed to her to _glow_ which she had just thought was what happened after you found out you were a lesbian but maybe meant more than that.

The kindness Molnie and Lesha and _especially_ Mintie were showing made her want to, to, _hug_ all of them, and, if she admitted it, make out with them, or...something...she wasn't really ready to consider alternate facts of life yet.

Her cheeks were hot, and her voice wouldn't work.

"I'd like to guess, may I?"

Leah nodded at her knees and became discomfortingly aware of the fact that she was primly pressing them together which seemed wrong for the situation but so did anything else.

"My guess is yes, and it's a lot. Am I right?"

Leah nodded the smallest nod in the history of nodding.

"Okay. How about you in there?"

I'm pretty horny but we were making out just now so it might just be kissing and not cumming.

"Mintie!"

She needs to know!

Leah blushed the tiny fraction of blush she wasn't already using, and fumed, but knew Mintie was right.

"Okay. It's probably starting based on how your energy feels to me. I'd like to put my hand on your heart with a crystal in my palm. It will show us more about where you are in the process right now. May I?"

Leah nodded again. Of course the doctor wouldn't be using mechanical medical equipment...

"I need your consent too, in there."

Yes but be nice. She's not comfortable with being touched there.

Leah humphed inwardly, suddenly determined to prove Mintie wrong, set the doll aside, and undid the top three buttons of her blouse out of sheer spite.

"Thank you, that will help. Breathe normally, and hold still, please."

Lesha reached into the beg she'd set beside her on the couch, and took out a smooth, flat pebble of purply stone, polished to a shine, palmed it, and placed this and her hand over Leah's heart. She braced for the cold, only to find the stone and Lesha's hand both warm.

When Lesha's hand made contact, the stone glowed brightly. She only held it there for a moment before taking it away again, then held the stone in her outstretched palm and above it an image of Mintie's shape swirled into being. It was like a silhouette, filled with light like a glowing star, but not entirely.

Hey that's me!

Why am I transparent?

"It's scrying the incarnational essence that's building up in you. Your body is getting ready to become physical, and this shows how far along with that you are. I see you have a human-like form that's very well-defined already. Is this what you look like when your incubator looks at you?"

Yeah!

Except I look human, not transparent.

"Then I think we're close, but not so close I don't have time to tell you that my name is Lesha, my pronouns are she/her and I just call myself a 'person' in English. What should I call you both, and what are your pronouns and gendername if you use one?"

I'm Mintie and I'm a girl she and her.

"Hello, Mintie. And you?"

"Leah, and I'm a girl too. Um, she and her."

"Thank you. I'm excited to meet you both. I'm called a midwife in English, but what that really means is that I'm someone who knows about helping su'khora--or succubi as they're usually called in English--become physical in a way that's happy and easy for them and the human who's carrying them. We use words from human childbirth to give respect to the fact that this is a very special occasion for both of you, and that a life that's new but been living for a little while is coming into a new way of living that everyone's really excited for, but it's not like human childbirth at all. Right now, Mintie is inside you, Leah, but she's inside your _soul_ , not your body, because she's not a physical being yet. You've been keeping her safe and helping her grow and become a person by dreaming and fantasizing and wishing for her ever since you made the wish that brought her to you."

"I...I didn't know she was _there_ , though, I only found out tonight..."

It's okay! I love you and I'm not mad, Leah!

"I know, I just wish I knew! I hate that you couldn't even _talk_ to me!"

Mintie hugged, and Leah hugged back. Lesha put her hand near Leah's like a question, and Leah snatched it up and clung tightly.

"I'm sorry. That must be hard to think of when you love her so much, but you need to know it's not your fault. When an incubator--that's one thing to call a human carrying a succubus like you are now--isn't aware that they're carrying, there's always a very good reason for it. Usually it means the Dream--that's what people call the succubi they've incubated--would be in some kind of danger if the incubator knew about them. I don't mean from you, but there might have been other problems, maybe for you, if you'd known she was there. Can you think of something like that in your life?"

Of course she could. How could she have gotten through however long Mintie had been there without having the same realizations about Mintie's nature and feeling duty-bound to cast her out? That moment after her roommates fled was the very first safe moment they'd had together.

Leah nodded.

"I want you to know that whatever danger kept you from knowing she was there is over now. You're in the safest place in all of existence now, and nothing can come from it or from beyond it to hurt you or her anymore. Do you want to know more about that, or is knowing it's true enough for now?"

It had to be enough. Leah couldn't absorb anything more unless it directly had to do with safely and kindly fulfilling her _need_ for Mintie to become a flesh-and-blood body in her arms _yesterday._

Leah nodded, then clarified: "It's enough."

Yeah, same here.

"Okay. Now that it's time for Mintie to become physical, you're both instinctively trying to give her the love she needs to do it, which is why you feel extra-horny. It won't be like a child's birth because Mintie will be using that love to create a physical body _outside_ yours, Leah, though probably really close to it."

Just wait till you see how close.

Lesha smiled, and Leah belated realized this hadn't just been to her.

"Mintie!"

But you like it.

Mintie being right, and telling Lesha, didn't help things.

"This process is very safe, and it doesn't hurt, though it can feel very intense. It usually happens with an orgasm, and some people say it's most intense orgasm they ever have, but not necessarily the best, because you'll find that your focus will be a little different during this orgasm, unless you're someone who usually cums by focusing entirely on their partner. Some people find that very normal, and some people find it very surprising not to focus on their own pleasure while they cum, but either way, you'll find that you have the orgasm if that's how it's going to happen in a way that puts the focus on how much you wish Mintie was there with you physically. I'm not saying that's what you _have_ to do, I'm saying it's what you _will_ do--do you understand the difference?"

"I think so, but...why?"

"Succubi are very, very good at making it happen, because it's part of how they work to know what their incubator's like the best and how to make you want them. Mintie, I also don't want you to worry about it. Just do what comes naturally and it'll happen--and if it doesn't, that's okay. Sometimes getting born takes a few tries, but you have all the time there is. This room is for you to use, if you want to do it here, for as long as you need to, even if that's days and days--but I know it won't be, because you're already closer than that. Do you understand so far?"

Do what comes naturally, got it.

Mintie had a naughty smile Leah was glad Lesha couldn't see--oh no, she _couldn't_ see Mintie, right? That's why she'd needed the (now put away) pebble-camera-thing, right?

"Leah?"

Oh, right. Leah nodded.

"I'm glad. Once Mintie is born, she's going to be very very hungry for sex, because that's the kind of desiring that feeds her and makes her physical. It's very rare, but sometimes the incubator can't provide it, which means the Dream goes to sleep until the incubator is ready to give more sex and affection. It's a very deep sleep that some people from Earth call sleeping-beautying because it's so deep it seems like the Dream is dead, but it's not. Most of the time playing with an unconscious person can't be consensual unless you've agreed about it first, but when a succubus is sleeping-beautying (and you _know_ that's what's happening) it's a special case because they need to wake up to consent! If Mintie sleeping-beauties after she's born, don't panic. Just take the time you need to be ready, and then play with her body or give her a kiss and it should wake her. She'll be fine, but she'll still be just as hungry as when she fell asleep."

"What does it mean if _I_ feel sleepy?"

It means we need to get in bed!

"Are you feeling sleepy right now?"

Leah nodded, though it wasn't _sleepy_ exactly--well, she _was_ sleepy, it must be three in the morning on Earth, but that exhaustion was safely sunk in a sea of adrenaline fifty thousand miles deep. What she felt was a sort of sluggish grogginess, like everything was full of heavy fog.

"I think Mintie might be right, then."

Yesss!

Mintie was grinning, self-satisfied, and it made Leah want to do...something, with her, especially since she was right _again._

"I see you using a lot of self-control and discipline right now. You're not expressing your horniness, but my stone and your answer before both said your body is really hungry for sex right now. I often find that I feel foggy when I'm horny but trying to put it aside too long because I start trying to not feel it, and that means not feeling so much of myself it's like going to sleep. Does that describe how you feel?"

Leah felt this way often. Sometimes _constantly,_ especially--oh. A little after each period ended. She--

I bet it does, because she's dying, I can smell it.

"MINTIE!"

I can though, and she needs to know.

Then whispering, private:

I'm scared, Leah. Please let her help.

_Okay._

Leah gulped, gave Mintie a mental squeeze, and then looked Lesha in the eye. 

"Mintie's right."

"I want to respect your moral code, and I'm here to help you give Mintie a body, not get you to have sex with _me,_ but I think it would help things if we could let you out of some of the discipline you're using right now. Self-control is very important, but this isn't a time where you need to be using so much of it. I do this because my own Dream means so much to me I want to help other people have what I have, but I wouldn't do _this_ if I wasn't very comfortable with other people's sexuality whether I'm going to play with them or not. May I give you some suggestions to try?"

Please say yes...

It was private again, and plaintive in a way that warmed her heart by filling it with molten iron. She would say yes if it killed her.

Which it might.

"Yes."

"Usually when I see someone wearing clothes like that, it's because they want to be in a part of themselves for a while that isn't sexual--"

Leah nodded assent, and, unbelieving her own actions, without missing a beat unbuttoned the rest of her blouse and shrugged it off her shoulders and pulled her arms out of the crisp cotton, then stood, undid the drawstring and stepped out of her pants before modesty could catch her determination, leaving herself standing there in her panties and nothing else. Was this a relief? She wasn't sure.

REALLY? Woohoo! Find a mirror find a mirror!

Mintie was still being conciliatorily private.

_A mirror?_

I see through your eyes.

Anyway, Lesha was another girl, it wasn't like undressing in front of a boy--oh. Yes it was. Was it? Was Lesha a lesbian too? Mintie was, of course, but that was, was, was okay.

"I bet you'd feel really comfortable in the bed under all those covers now."

Yes, yes she would, but she hesitated.

Everything in the best parts of Christianity said love was the most powerful thing there was. Song of Songs said it was stronger than the grave, and she was getting the impression that the people here wouldn't disagree with that, but here in what she would say next was the true proof of it:

"Is there a mirror I can look in first?"

Lesha smiled, and stood, and made a motion, and the couch disappeared into the floor and the window turned opaque and became a wall-sized floor-to-ceiling mirror, and Leah squared off in front of it and almost conveniently forgot whose eyes Mintie was looking through but _didn't,_ and she stood and she _looked._ Leah usually avoided mirrors for fear of being vain, but the sight was familiar enough, though she never stayed topless this long out of the shower, and never in front of a full-length mirror of which the only one in their student apartment was bolted to the back of the front door, and knowing that Mintie was looking and that Mintie's looking was the point made it strange, like she was looking at herself through Mintie's eyes instead of the other way around.  


Oh, _Leah..._

Mintie's voice was like honey she wanted to lick up, and being naked without trying to fly past the occasion was... _almost_ naked. She grabbed the waist of her panties, gave herself a defiant glare, and slid them off to be kicked over by where her PJs lay in a heap, leaving her fully nude _and_ without clothing in arm's reach, a first for her. The room was warm, but she could feel the air anyway, unfamiliar on her bare skin, and Mintie's wordless, entranced gaze of adoration behind her own, taking in every detail.

_The passion of love bursting into flame is more powerful than death itself_  


A lot of the other ones seemed to be wrong, but that verse was holding right now. She didn't just look, she _lingered,_ settling her eyes places she thought Mintie would like to gaze--her breasts with their nipples standing out hard even though she was quite warm enough, the curves of her hips, between her legs among the fuzz of black hair there, her thighs, then back up her frame again lingering all over again. She even squeezed her arms along the sides of her breasts to give herself cleavage for an instant, then looked in on Mintie, who was touching herself, both hands busy between her legs (which squished _her_ breasts together in a way that told Leah what she'd just done had been totally worth it from the perspective of pleasing Mintie), staring intently at Leah's reflection, face a mask of pleasure.

_Inappropriate!_ came the reflexive thought, except that was itself inappropriate, because wasn't this the whole point?

Leah was a virgin, but she knew what it felt like, what Mintie was doing, and it looked like fun. Ideas swirled, fought: do it here where Mintie can see! The bed looks so comfortable! Lesha is RIGHT THERE--where was Lesha? There, in the corner, so quiet and scarce it seemed like she'd left the room, intently reading something on what might be a phone or might be a little book.

She settled on a quick stroke, followed by diving for the bed. Her flesh felt shockingly silky-soft against itself, sense of touch heightened and retuned presumably by Mintie's oncoming birth to make even the tentative caressing of her mound that always began this electric, and when she slid her fingers lower and found wetness there already she felt dizzy with the wave of pleasure that washed over her--but managed to keep her promise to herself to dive for the bed as well.

The sheets were cool, but only just, and so incredibly silky-soft she almost came from the sensation of sliding into them. She immediately set to work between her legs, settling down in the soft feather mattress perfumed with something subtle and unplaceably romantic, spread for best access. She'd never done this naked before, except one very disappointing time in the shower that hadn't been worth the sinning _at all_ , and she'd never ever done it without fear of discovery (too late!) or hell. For a moment she was just lost in the pleasure of her own body, fingers on swollen lips, silky sheets surrounding tired limbs, and then, contrary everything she'd been taught about giving in to lust, she _missed Mintie_ and looked within and grabbed her for a passionate kiss, which Mintie returned with a furious hunger that almost shocked Leah out of the fantasy it was so good.

How exactly did girls have sex with each other? No time like the present to figure it out. Lesha was probably still there being superhumanly unobtrusive if they got stuck but she knew they wouldn't--Mintie was all over the naked self-image she'd brought into the fantasy, little hands groping and touching everywhere, squeezing breasts (since when did that feel so good!?), stroking cheeks, reaching for her mound, pulling them together so Mintie could wrap around her hot and silky and also damp between her legs which wasn't something you expected to feel good but WAS--Mintie pulled away from kissing to talk without stopping anything else she was doing.

Hey, you're playing with yourself physically still, right?

_Yessss..._

I think I can move your hand if you let me. Want ME to play with you physically?

Leah's eyes widened.

_Like, possess me!?_

Just your hand!

Please?

She wanted to feel Mintie's touch so badly.

_Okay._

I can't do it if you're moving it yourself!

Oh, that probably should have been obvious. With effort--she'd been starting to get close--she stopped, and felt something strange in her wrist, almost like an itch, and she found that if she wished for the itch to become Mintie moving her hand, it did. It was a little strange, because it only worked if she went along with it moment-by-moment, saying yes to each an every motion, but it _did_ work and it felt strongly like the fingers that were touching her were Mintie's, not her own, and was quickly back on the way to orgasm under Mintie's expert technique--Mintie seemed to know _exactly_ how she liked it, almost better than she did. It was lovely, and, and, _warm,_ the bed was warm and soft of course and Mintie's--her--hand was warm against herself but it was _warm_ like kissing, not cold and sad and sinful like she'd felt doing it alone and yes some of that was just knowing she didn't have to feel bad about this but Mintie was _there_ she might not be physically there yet but it felt the same as if she was and she would be soon because Lesha had been absolutely right here they were making a constant, intense wish together with every motion of Leah's hand under Mintie's control for Mintie to be there physically and she _had_ been so horny she was starting to faint from it and she loved Mintie _so much_ and Mintie might be concentrating too hard to say I love you back right now but Leah knew she'd try and trip over the words if Leah told her and, she...woullllld--

The orgasm took her slowly and at first unexpectedly because she was concentrating on letting Mintie use her hand and refused to stop and then the old guilt and stopping this before it went any further tried to clamp down but the molten iron that had filled her heart before erupted out and carried them away on a flood of fire. Her lungs burned and creaked and her mouth burst open with strange panting moan and all through it Mintie's face and the constant careful _yes_ of letting Mintie move her hand stayed fixed, the immovable axis of the hurricane that was ripping through her. Her back arched, limbs tensed, free arm clutched desperately at the sheet, and it just _kept going_ , long after she would have usually stopped, climbing, singing like a continuous lightning bolt through her struck from her, her, her _pussy_ and then something caught something _aligned_ and the real orgasm took her and she screamed aloud so that the room echoed with it and something shifted, moved, _flowed,_ started between her fingers where Mintie was pressing gently at her still-covered entrance while keeping pressure on her clit with the bases of her fingers like the wetness that covered them was moving, expanding, filling out and suddenly a warm soft slippery shape she knew so well was on top of her, still transparent but _there_ growing solid and _becoming_ Mintie was bigger than she'd expected, much bigger than--no, oh, oh _Mintie_...Leah's eyes filled with tears over and above those from the orgasm as she realized that the hands that took shape around the one between her legs, gently lifted it away and replaced the surrogate caressing with the longed-for direct touch of her beloved gently stroking her clitoris and then as it grew sensitive pressing again at her entrance deliciously and gently, other fingers splayed over her lips, she realized those hands and the arms they were attached to and the body _they_ were attached to were exactly as much smaller than Leah was now as Mintie's doll had been than Leah's three-year-old self when she'd first gotten Mintie which just so happened to be small enough to seem doll-like while not so small as to seem like she was a child, and just as carryable yet comfortingly heavy. Now, Mintie was looking up at her out of a watery-eyed smile in a very human and inconceivably beautiful face framed by real, silky hair.

It was everything she hoped, everything she could have wished for, more, better than she could have imagined, and then just as she was coming down enough from the orgasm to look at Mintie properly and say hello Mintie got that naughty grin and _pressed_ and there was an instant of pain and a sort of _pop_ and Leah was shocked because wasn't it not supposed to be that easy and then Mintie's little fingers were inside her and didn't seem so little and she felt slippery and soft as Mintie slid them deep and then with more of that naughty grin _curled them_ and _oh_ _**FUCK** \--_

When she'd regained consciousness enough to gather Mintie by her side and cuddle, panting--having kicked away the too-hot covers--for a while while Mintie licked her fingers clean and Leah blushed with the realization that yes she did make something a succubus would like to drink, she looked down, kissed the top of Mintie's head, and murmured:

"I love you so much."

"I love you too."

Then Mintie took Leah's hand, and put it between her own legs onto slippery, wet, naked flesh still hot with lust, and pressed one of Leah's fingers in between lips onto an entrance that was covered just as Leah's had been.

"Now you do me."


End file.
